Laundry Room Remodel

I found myself with a little free time this weekend and decided to make it count. I have been wanting to add storage to our laundry room for over two years (I even wrote this post about it back in 2011). I had been holding out for an amazing deal on an upper cabinet, and this spring I finally found one at our Restore for about $25. But... it sat in the garage all summer. My husband actually set this project in motion complaining about the current laundry room situation on Friday.

So this weekend we brought in my cabinet and I got painting. I had an inspiration photo to work from out of Better Homes and Gardens magazine, so T.J. and I were on the same page. He had some carpentry to do, and I had painting to do! I even went to Menard's and found the shelving we needed myself.

This project was truly on a dime. I found shelving in the bargain bin because the ends were broken (but we didn't need the whole length anyway!) for $1.69. We also reused whatever we could.

The grant total was only $36 excluding paint we already had. Now that is a big bang for our buck! See the bottom of this post for a picture of what we were (shamefully) working with before.

Here is my Restore cabinet. It was already cream so it only took a couple coats of white applied evenly with a small foam roller to fix it up.

My broken bargain board that saved us at least $15!

 We simply set the cabinet on the existing shelf after I slapped a fresh coat of white on it (it was highlighter orange before!). The bracket makes the whole operation sturdy.

Next, T.J. added the upper shelves. He made two "braces" out of primed 1x2s for each one and attached them to the wall (into the studs) and the side of the cabinet.

Finally, I reattached the cabinet doors, touched up the ends of the brackets with white paint, and T.J. added extra 1x2 to the fronts of each upper shelf to make a finished edge.

My inspiration photo that has been pinned up for a year in the laundry room!

I wouldn't call this room completely finished... I'm still thinking about replacing the awful florescent light with something prettier, and maybe even stenciling the wall behind the shelves like my inspiration photo. But heck, it is much better than it was before! Our new view when coming in from the garage:

Cabinet Revelation

I recently shared with you pictures of my whole house. The one room I am least proud of/in love with is the laundry room. It has a crazy neon orange and yellow shelf and houses our water heater, water softener, and furnace, because we have no basement to hide those items in. While I was perusing my houzz.com bi-weekly email the other day I stumbled upon a laundry room that was pretty small like mine but looked amazing. The difference? Cabinets! I am now consumed with the thought that my laundry room could be amazing too. A splash of color, some crisp white cabinets with awesome knobs. These updates would change my life, let alone my attitude toward doing laundry. Here are some of the inspiration pictures (mostly from Pinterest.com) I have found, followed by the sad reality of what my laundry room looks like currently.

I love the baskets over the cabinets and how clean and crisp everything looks. I even love the green.

The picture above came with a detailed tutorial found here. 

Picture above from houzz.com.

 

This picture also comes from a blog with lots of before and after pictures. There is something special about the pictures that come from other blogs - the fact that I know someone else painted and updated this and did not just go out and buy a ready made laundry room makes it seem so much more accessible.

 

And here is the cold hard truth. Well not exactly... this picture was taken before we moved in. Here is what the laundry room really looks like on any given day. :-)

Pretty embarrassing. Luckily we have at least one good thing to work with... a decent washer and dryer. Now all we need is some elbow grease and a lucky break to find some good condition on-the-cheap cabinets. Over on Young House Love's blog they recently found 6 cabinets at The Habitat for Humanity Restore for $1 each - can I get that lucky?